Thursday, 14 January 2010

English Councils' Salt Stocks

I was amazed to read in this article on the BBC website that each English council is required to hold only 6 days of salt - the officially minimum recommended level of salt needed to meet demand. Having lived around England in my younger days, I can say the only area which wouldn't need more than that in an average winter is the south-west, although there were quite a few winters there when black ice was present in early mornings.

British Salt director David Stephen made an offer of half price salt to 30 councils in April last year but none accepted his largesse.

The weather here is little different to the likes of West Yorkshire yet most of Scotland is depicted as a place of cold and miserable weather. Quite untrue of course yet the fallacy continues.

There have been problems here with salt supplies but these have been readily resolved by the Scottish government and the councils without any cuts in gritting requirements.

'Transport minister Sadiq Khan admitted that the six day advice may be altered in future.'

May? How kind of him to give this consideration. Not only has this ridiculous recommendation caused misery to hundreds of thousands in the past weeks, it has cost pain and suffering to hundreds who have had the misfortune to fall on untreated roads or pavements. The conflicting advice about clearing your own pavement was only the start of it and the costs to councils for imported salt will be high.

The government's mismanagement has been appalling but then that's the norm these days from labour.

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comments:

Welcome to the wonderful world of Labours global warmist national control freakery. They're currently nicking grit off councils that ignored their advice and giving it to councils that took it. Have a guess who the Labour controlled ones mainly were. :-S

I am absolutely disgusted with Coventry City Council on this matter. My street has not been gritted at all. My wheelie bin has not been emptied for weeks and the excuse is that H & S rulings forbid the poor binmen from operating in this street because of the conditions.

SR nations like the Phillipines were made to sell of their rice stocks a few years back. 1980's I think, because it turned up on the great universal spread sheet as a non performing asset. So it was stolen. Nations like that with extremes of weather are the one's who need food stocks, what with AGW or weaponised weather.

I asked the lady responsible for sending out the County gritters whether rock-salt has a 'shelf-life', she confirmed that it does not. So why are Councils not encouraged to build up stocks in less cool winters so that they can cope with a worst case scenario when they do occur? The only additional cost would be storage space.

Seems emergency supplies will arrive by ship on or around the 22nd Jan which is a shame since temperatures are set to plummet again on 17/18th!

There is a general point here. I am in several minds on independence but the growing uselessness of the british government ought to be a strong theme for the SNP. Once, many years ago, Britain was a well administered country but central government has become simply incompetent and perhaps worse unaccountable. My diagnosis is the tendency of both parties to transfer work to agencies which are immune from scrutiny (but not from paying salaries which make the management rich beyond the dreams of avarice - if not bankers) has to a large part caused this. Central government has also taken away much of the scope of local government to act in the interests of their localities. The meddlesome nature of central government then compounds their follies.

The message for the Scottish government is to deliver efficient effective public adminstration which is accountable to the elected representatives of the people locally and nationally - then the 20% in favour of independence will grow

As I mentioned on your birthday post SR, West Sussex County Council had plenty of salt. I heard an interview on local radio at the start of the cold spell where the Chief Exec said they had enough for up to 40 nights of "normal" cold. That's been used up more quickly than expected so they ordered some more from abroad. It was due to arrive locally in Shoreham Harbour on the 18th but will now arrive on the 22nd. BUT - the government has requisitioned it to give to less prudent councils! We're now thawing here but more cold weather is forecast; indeed Joe Bastardi of Accuweather says it could be cold right through till April -http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp

I wouldn't mind betting that west Sussex has to pay over the odds for its next consignment.